Making Time for the Body: Galen on Time Scarcity and Health

Today, many patients and health care providers feel they lack sufficient discretionary time to maintain personal health and offer high-quality care. While this problem seems strictly modern, the Roman-era physician Galen of Pergamon also recognized that time scarcity has adverse health effects and proposed strategies to mitigate them. This article critically examines Galen's approach and its relevance today. The study demonstrates that Galen understood time scarcity to affect individuals across divisions of class and civic status and that he believed the time-scarce could, by adopting certain strategies, achieve a kind of good health. Nevertheless, Galen is clear that optimal health demands leisure. Read in the modern day, Galen's arguments highlight how time scarcity can deepen financial and identity-based health inequities while simultaneously transcending typical demographic categories. Though Galen's solutions focus on individual choices, his argument's implications should also encourage modern readers to pursue collective, structural change.